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Friends – Earth 2 – tape 2130

This tape goes straight into the pilot of Friends. If you haven’t watched it, you should. The opening scenes are full of good jokes, but they also tell us so much about the different characters. It really does hit the ground running.

I wish the fashions had held up as well, particularly Joey.

Monica’s coworker is Clea Lewis – Audrey from Ellen.

After this, recording switches to Sky One and an episode of Earth 2. Day 72 according to Clancy Brown’s voiceover, and it’s winter. That would make this episode Grendlers in the Myst. The colonists are tracking the alien Grendlers to see if they can find supplies stolen from their camp.

They start picking up a signal from a woman they don’t know.

There’s a search for her, lots of running through caves, another person who’s also after her, and it turns out to be a 20 year old recording, and the stranger chasing them is the son of the woman.

We also find out that Clancy Brown’s wife contracted a terminal disease while pregnant with his daughter, and he kept her on artificial life support – despite her presumably being brain dead, long enough for his daughter to be born. And I might have misunderstood the ending here, but it seemed to suggest that he’s kept her on life support since that time, so that when the time came (as it did this episode) he can show her to his daughter. I must have misunderstood this because this seems monstrous.

After this, more Friends, and we’ve skipped all the way to season two and The One Where Ross Finds Out. Ross is with Julie. Rachel’s delighted.

But Rachel is also dating, and she has dinner with Arye Gross – another Ellen alumnus.

And, because Ross does find out, it has a crowd-pleasing ending.

Before the next episode, there’s a Friends-themed Channel 4 Ident.

I’ve no idea what order these episodes are being shown in, as we’re back to the start of season one for The One with the East German Laundry Detergent.

Chandler wants to break up with Janice, but can’t find the right time.

And Rachel faces off against a bully in the launderette.

Next, and at last, an episode that follows sequentially from the last on, The One with the Butt. Joey’s in a play called Freud!

I’m slightly cheating, and watching these episodes on the extended DVDs, and on those there’s a whole extra scene where Joey meets Estelle his new agent. It’s totally missing on this version.

Rachel appears to have joined the red cross.

Joey gets a job as Al Pacino’s butt double.

After this we just back to season two and The One With Russ. Joey gets some bad reviews for his new show.

Monica is going out with Fun Bobby.

But the gang are a bit worried about the amount he drinks.

Rachel has a new boyfriend, Russ.

Joey has an audition for Days of our Lives, but he gets the feeling that the casting agent wants him to sleep with her. He checks with his agent, Estelle (after her no-show in the earlier episode).

Ross and Russ meet.

The next episode is a few episodes after this, and is the second part of a two parter, The One After the Superbowl.

This one is chock full of cameos including Julia Roberts

And Jean Claude Van Damme

Ross has discovered that Marcel the monkey was stolen from the zoo he was given to, but is now appearing in commercials and movies. He’s filming Outbreak 2: The Monkey Takes Manhattan.

Roberts plays a girl who went to school with Chandler, and they hook up.

But she just wants to humiliate him for something he did to her in fourth grade.

After this episode, recording continues with an episode of Roseanne. The family is going to the airport to welcome Dan back home.

I have no idea why he was away, so I checked on wikipedia. He’d been in California visiting his ailing mother.

It’s also Christmas, and Roseanne gives Dan their mortgage and a lighter.

After this, there’s the start of Under the Moon in which portly middle-aged men talk about football. The tape ends during this

Someone I knew at the time told me in all seriousness that Jean-Claude Van Damme was starring in the sequel to Outbreak, and not having seen Friends because I hated it, I was taken in. It was only later I discovered this was a joke on TV, and twigged the chap was a pathological liar. That’s my JCVD/Outbreak/Friends anecdote.